Ideologue inconsistences on issues like smoking, abortion – what else is new?

It seems we have inconsistencies on a pair of social issues now pending before Illinois state government. Yet that’s really nothing new – ideologues often don’t have a consistent train of thought in determining when they want to meddle with someone else’s life.

PRITZKER: Fear of J.B. scares ideologues. Good!

I refer to a bill now pending before Gov. J.B, Pritzker – the one approved last week by the General Assembly that says people ought to be 21 years old in order to legally buy tobacco products and other items for vaping. As in inhaling fumes from tobacco-less products.

THEN, THERE’S A pair of bills that will be pending before the state Legislature this spring – ones that would eliminate many of the restrictive measures that anti-abortion legislators have tried to impose throughout the years.

They’re going to screech “bloody murder!!!!” (literally, I kid you not) in claiming they’re somehow looking out for a life that has yet to be born, thereby justifying the taking into account of a mother’s sentiments about her own body into irrelevance.

But when it comes to efforts to reduce the legal availability of smoking-related products to young people, the ideologues amongst us are going to claim their opposition is meant to protect the rights of personal choice of young people.

It’s almost like they’re claiming the right of a 16-year-old girl to develop a smoking habit – claiming that it’s her own body she’s hurting. It’s her choice.

YET THEY’RE PREPARED to screech and scream the “murderer” and “baby killer” labels at a young girl who thinks she’s not ready for a baby, and is under the (as the ideologues would view it) the misguided belief that it’s her own body being impacted by the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

It was nearly a half-century ago that the Supreme Court of the United States issued the larger ruling that struck down measures criminalizing abortion. The strategy throughout the years is to accept the general concept, but have legislatures impose so many restrictions so as to make it next to impossible for some women to actually have access to abortion.

The two bills now pending (one in the Illinois House of Representatives and the other in the state Senate) would eliminate many of the restrictions they’ve tried to enact – even up to the final days of a pregnancy.

Their desire to meddle with the desires of a mother seem to be to the extreme they’d want to require the paramedics to be on the scene of an abortion to try to revive the fetus.

THEY TALK ABOUT denying unborn children “independent rights,” but it really comes across as meddling with the mother’s desires – even though hers is the existing life that ought to be the priority.

But then on a real public health issue such as smoking, we’re going to hear the nonsense rhetoric of how absurd it is to tell someone they have to be 21 in order to smoke.

Maybe we’ll even hear the argument made that people can enlist in the army and die for their country at age 18 – why not let them smoke?

As it was, the General Assembly passed a measure just last year calling for this same age increase – only to have then-Gov. Bruce Rauner wield the “veto” pen to the measure.

THE FACT THAT smoking is a foul habit that impacts everybody around you somehow doesn’t matter to the ideologues who want to view it solely as a personal choice. Whereas the baby forced into life because of the denial of a personal choice is something we all wind up having to cover the cost of caring for.

I find it amusing that the ideologues seem to fear Pritzker is going to push the abortion measure erasing generations of restrictions into law, while also giving his approval to a smoking age boost.

They’re going to get all hysterical with their rhetoric because government basically is going to prevent them from meddling into the lives of others – the young girl who really shouldn’t have a pregnancy now and the people who have to breathe in the fumes of the nitwit smokers amongst them.

But then again, hysteria and nonsense is oft the way of politics in Illinois!

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Illinois’ smoking age remains at 18

I almost find myself agreeing with Gov. Bruce Rauner, who recently used his veto power to kill off a bill that would have raised the age to 21 at which a person could legally buy a package of cigarettes or other tobacco products.

RAUNER: A VETO to smoking age hike

Currently, people have to be capable of showing they’re 18 or older in order to purchase cigarettes, or even those smokeless devices that supposedly allow one to experience the “joy” of smoking without exposure to tobacco.

RAUNER, IN ISSUING his veto of the measure, said that while he has no problem trying to discourage people from smoking, he doesn’t think this law will do a thing to achieve that goal.

In fact, Rauner is trying to view this as an Illinois economy issue – in that it would harm retailers who sell cigarettes by limiting the number of people they can legitimately sell their product to.

The governor actually thinks many people would just turn to surrounding states (if possible) to buy their cigarettes, since places like Indiana aren’t the least bit inclined to want to reduce their smoking ages.

In fact, the idea of people venturing across State Line Road to Indiana in order to make their cigarette purchases (at shops with generic names such as Smokes) is already a common practice. It would just have even younger people thinking in terms of doing their business elsewhere when it comes to cigarette purchases.

PERSONALLY, I’M AWARE that most people don’t even wait until turning 18 these days before picking up the nicotine habit. I recall my own school days when kids were usually around 12 or 13 when they first felt compelled to start smoking.

I can recall Junior High School days when those inclined to want to smoke knew exactly which local businesses (usually local gas stations, the grungier they were the better) would sell cigarettes to kids – and which were not.

Which means I don’t doubt there are some people more interested in their financial bottom line than in anybody’s health to continue their current practices – regardless of any stinkin’ law.

Are shops like this one in Hammond, Ind., the only real beneficiary of reducing the smoking age?

It may actually elevate the idea of selling cigarettes to minors (in some mini-minds) as somehow being a gesture toward personal freedom.

WHICH IS NONSENSE, of course. But it is one that is real.

It would take more than a change in the smoking age in order to actually stop teenagers so inclined to do so to actually not want to pick up a nicotine habit.

In my own case, cigarettes (and smoking, in general) was never a habit I ever sought to acquire. It was actually my father who (indirectly) made me not want to smoke because of the example he set.

No, he wasn’t any sort of tobacco teetotaler. My father was a cigarette smoker as a young man, and I can remember as a young child how much I hated the way he smelled as a result.

ACTUALLY, I WAS around many people who smoked in my family. But when I remember back, I think of the odor of my father as being the most repulsive.

My father has long-ago given up this habit, which I must admit makes being around him a bit more pleasant. But it’s such that I tend to think of being around people who smoke as being a tad too disgusting to endure.

So perhaps the key to discouraging cigarette smoking (and use of tobacco in general) is to make young people realize just how repulsive their action truly is.

Because actions such as what was pondered by the General Assembly this year (and vetoed by Rauner) is only going to make some people think of cigarettes as some sort of “achievement” in life they will gain the right to once they are “grown up.”

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We’re in for a month of Hell; a slew of ads warning us of pop, tax evils

I’m sure the people who are all outraged over the price of pop these days, what with the cost added due to the Cook County tax on sweetened beverage sales, feel a great injustice was done on Wednesday.
 

Heart Association wants pop tax

For the Cook County Board, after listening to hours of debate from people arguing both the merits and drawbacks of the pop tax, decided that the way to handle a proposed ordinance repealing the tax was to send it to a committee.

SPECIFICALLY, THE COUNTY board’s Finance Committee will hold a hearing on the issue, and only then will the measure come before the full county board for a final vote.

The crackpots who are upset that the cost of a 2-liter pop bottle is now about $0.65 more than it used to be probably had fantasies that the county board would immediately take a vote on the pop tax repeal ordinance, and that the tax would be ancient history by now!

I mock their line of logic in that our way of government is meant to be deliberate and slow – things don’t just get rammed through the process into action. Or at least they’re not supposed to be.

So the fact that we have to wait for the Finance Committee to have its next meeting scheduled for Oct. 10, with the next full county board session set for the following day? That’s the way things are supposed to be.

WHICH MEANS THAT, Yes, it’s true that the tax will remain in effect for at least one more month. But that could mean the political momentum could continue to build to a point where a majority of the county board will feel compelled to approve a repeal of the pop tax.

Or maybe the healthcare interests that want such a pop tax on the grounds it would discourage people from drinking so many carbonated beverages will be able to make their case to the point where county board officials will feel compelled to leave well enough alone and let the pop tax remain in place.

That’s the democratic process in action. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. As for the people who are upset that the county board couldn’t be strong-armed on Wednesday to giving them what they want?

 

Retailers don't want to collect tax for Cook County

All I can say is that such talk sounds downright un-American!

I’LL ADMIT TO finding it annoying to open my mailbox to see the assorted fliers being sent to me to try to spin me and others to believe their side of the issue. It’s feeling like an Election Day is pending, and at a time when we’re bracing ourselves for the level of partisan nonsense we’re getting from the gubernatorial dreamers.

It’s like we never get a break from the politicking. Which is, I’ll admit, a hell-ish sense to have to feel.

But I’d be more bothered by strong-arm tactics. The sense that the process will allow both sides to make their arguments, with the majority sentiment prevailing, does provide a sense of relief.

Now as I have written before, I support the idea of this particular tax because I realize Cook County government has financial obligations to meet and needs the income. I suspect that people will really start complaining if those obligations, particularly the ones related to providing health care services to the public, are not met.

SO WHILE I am not enthused about the idea of a tax, the alternatives strike me as being worse.

Besides, the reality is that if sentiment against this tax is really so intense, then there will be a future chance to express ourselves. Because there are those future election cycles in which county board President Toni Preckwinkle and the county board members who voted for the tax will have to face re-election.

Political people who backed the pop tax could easily find themselves out on their keisters come the 2018 election cycle. It’s a political risk that elected officials have to take with every single vote they cast.

Turning out a politician who disappoints us? That’s about as all-American a concept as we have!

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Did someone collect $ off my mother?

I remember when my mother died just over three years ago, my brother and I took it on ourselves to contact as many entities as we could to inform them of her death.

Since our mother had serious health ailments and her medical expenses were covered by Medicaid and Medicare (the last decade of her life, she was kept alive by three-times-a-week kidney dialysis treatments), that meant calls to federal and state entities.

WHO TOLD US it would be unwise to immediately cut off any accounts related to her. After all, she received medical treatments literally up until the day she died.

There were bound to be some medical bills not yet submitted that would have to be covered. Unless my brother and I were prepared to pay for those treatments (which I seem to recall had a price tag of about $1,000 per each three-hour treatment, plus the unexpected costs).

For several months thereafter, a card would come every month in the mail addressed to my mother – the card that gave her account numbers for Medicaid and Medicare and showed she was covered.

Even though our mother was gone. She remained “alive” in the system for technical purposes.

I HADN’T THOUGHT much about it in recent months. At least not until this week, when I learned of the Illinois auditor general’s office’s review of the Illinois Department of Health and Family Services.

Each state agency and program gets audited every two years. This time, they found that some 8,232 people were still on Medicaid rolls – even though they were deceased.

In some cases, people who were already dead were signed up for benefits through a state managed care program.

The audit found 561 cases of dead people for whom benefits totaling $7 million were paid out.

THE AUDITOR DID its study by comparing the Medicaid rolls as of last June to the list of Public Health death records dating back to 1970.

In one case, they found someone who died in 1989, but received $29,860 in benefits for hospital, lab and dental bills incurred between 2005 and October of last year.

To the state’s benefit, they’re now contacting the entities that were paid the money, and they say some $11 million will be repaid by the end of this year – with about two-thirds of that money already repaid.

Yet the whole thing does make me wonder.

NOW AS FAR as I know, nobody made any money off my dead mother that they weren’t entitled to for the medical care she received during her lifetime.

Although the whole process and how it could linger on for so long gives me reason for concern. To this day, there are bits of mail that come addressed to my mother, including the one that showed up Friday from the Globe Life and Accident Insurance Co. that offers her a chance to buy a $50,000 life insurance policy for as little as $2.17 a month.

Most of them are like that; junk mail solicitations that I suspect she would have laughed at before throwing away, if she were still here with us.

But even by scam standards, trying to make some money off the rolls of the dead is just a bit too garish to contemplate.

IT WAS HARD enough to have to watch my mother at the end, particularly when her eyesight got worse, she had problems walking (my brother and I still have the walker she used occasionally).

The idea that I’d have to relive those memories of her physical deterioration because someone might still be getting a few bucks off of it is just too much to bear.

And even if it turns out (as I suspect) that my mother isn’t among the people whose records got searched by the auditor general’s office, it must come as a blow to those people whose loved ones are on the “list,” so to speak.

We ought to just let them Rest In Peace, even on future Election Days when some might try to rely on their ballots for political victory.

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EXTRA: Illinois takes its one step back following Death Penalty abolition

For those people who want to think Illinois is some sort of progressive paradise (or hellhole, if you’re an ideological nitwit), Tuesday was the day we took our one step back.

By that, I mean our state made some serious steps toward advancing into the 21^st Century by doing away with its flawed capital crimes statute (which required us to accept that it was flawed beyond repair) and accepting the reality of civil unions.

YET THE IDEOLOGUES got something they wanted – a lessening of the smoking ban in public places that made Illinois a Midwestern U.S. leader just a couple of years ago.

It was the fact that Illinois approved such a rigid ban that surrounding states were being forced to accept the fact that their ways were a bit backward. Even Indiana is beginning to realize it is just a matter of time before they will have to impose restrictions on use of tobacco products – in order to protect the public health of Hoosiers at-large.

Until Tuesday, that is.

For the Illinois House of Representatives, by a slim margin, voted to ease the restrictions on smoking in public by allowing people at the riverboat casinos that really aren’t boats to light up a cigarette and rot out their bodies while they play the games of chance that cause them to drain their wallets of cash, ATM card credits and anything else they have of value.

WHICH STINKS FOR people whose lot in life requires them to be exposed to such places. I could care less if would-be gamblers want to impose melanoma on themselves. It is the people who must work in such facilities (in a lot of these towns with gambling boats, there aren’t a lot of other employment options) who get exposed to second-hand smoke who deserve our protections.

But worse than that is the fact that I’m sure those Hoosier nitwits who think they’re somehow standing up for “the American Way of life” by letting people light up while playing a slot machine or a hand of blackjack are going to take the Illinois House action and claim it is a jolt of energy for their idiotic ideological position.

The Illinois House giving these political partisans a sympathetic vote is almost as morally bankrupt as extending a gambler’s credit while he’s down so that he can lose some more money – and really wind up leaving the casino boat with his pockets drained.

I couldn’t help but notice state Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago (and brother to 14^th Ward Alderman Ed Burke) who said during debate on this issue that “70 percent” of people who visit casinos smoke. Maybe if casinos weren’t such grungy (and gaudy) places, we’d have more non-smokers wanting to visit such places.

SO I AM skeptical of the gambling boat industry claims that Illinois’ riverboat casinos have lost some $800 million since Illinois banned smoking in public places. Could it be with the economic climate that has left many people unemployed that people just don’t have as much money to lose – out of some foolish belief that it is fun to piss away cash at games of chance while garish lights flash and there’s a fancy buffet available that will give you a bargain-priced meal if you have enough credits (ie., if you have lost enough and the casino owner wants to keep you on the premises so that you’ll lose even more money).

As you have likely (I would hope) figured out by now, I’m not a casino person (although my step-mother is, and she seems to have luck at winning). The ambiance is usually lost upon me. The idea of it reeking of stale cigarette smoke makes the place even less appealing.

I’m still trying to figure out the “logic” of an event I wrote about for an area newspaper last year that rewarded junior high school-age youth who participated in a program meant to get them interested in school and their studies with a fancy dinner at the casino boat in East Chicago, Ind.

Which is why I wouldn’t be the least bit upset if the Illinois Senate decides it doesn’t want to go along with this idea (which is possible, because Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago), isn’t exactly a tobacco-sympathetic person either.

EVEN GOV. PAT Quinn tossed out a little verbal snippet indicating he doesn’t think much of what the Illinois House did, although it remains to be seen if he becomes intimidated enough to give the ideologues this particular issue as  compensation for some of the significant measures he has signed into law in recent months.

That would be the real embarrassment for Illinois government.

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